Quarantine Journals - Video Chats, Dandelions, Gardening

Penny had a video chat with her friend Trevor today. It went really well… I think they talked for over an hour while Oliver was sleeping. That was a huge relief for me to hear because the last couple of video chats that she had were just the other kid sitting there staring at her until she asked to get off. She tries really hard to engage them in conversation or games, but sometimes they're just having none of it. But, Trevor brought his a game. And they played lots of games and chatted.  But, when she got off the chat she was frustrated because it meant that she didn't have any time left for video games before Oliver woke up. Which led to a very grumpy couple of hours. The weather was beautiful outside, so I suggested us all going for a walk, but she didn't wanna walk. She wanted to play in the front yard. She was mad about all of it. It was just kind of hard to overcome, and I was grumpy to because it just sometimes feels like you can never win.  Much to my surprise, she did wake up this morning raring to go on the chore list. She helped me make lunch, and she was excited to help serve dinner, and she begged me multiple times to do laundry with her but I was always trying to get something else finished out. My gardening or watering the plants or cleaning up dead leaves or cleaning up the kitchen.

I did manage to sneak outside for about 15 minutes to put some compost on the sweet potato sprouts, but then Oliver was done being outside and I had to chase him inside to watch him so that they can finish putting together dinner. We had poke bowls/hand rolls and Mojito's with our Fresh Mint.

There's a lot of awful stuff continuing to happen to the POC community, and between that and the total disregard for the pandemic that's going on, I find myself increasingly depressed.

That's all for today.